I’m struggling to capture all the key points during fast-paced meetings and often miss important details. I’m looking for a reliable AI-powered note taking app that can automatically transcribe and organize meeting notes. If you’ve used any that worked well, I’d really appreciate your suggestions and experiences. Thanks for any help you can give.
Honestly, you can toss a rock and hit about six AI note-taking apps but not all of them are created equal. Otter.ai’s like the go-to for a bunch of folks—solid live transcription, picks up most voices, spits out a nice summary afterward. It syncs with Zoom, Google Meet, etc., which is a lifesaver if you’re tired of trying to decipher your own frantic typing later. Downside is, if your meetings have a lot of crosstalk or people mumbling, it misses stuff or garbles it.
Then you’ve got Fireflies.ai, which is a close second. They do OK with organizing key points, even pull out action items which is cool if your boss is always on your case about follow-ups. Sometimes it feels a little too “automated,” though, if you know what I mean—the ‘summary’ can be hilariously off if someone tells a joke and the AI marks it as an action item. (“Order 50 pizzas for Q3 planning session”—not today, Satan.)
If you want something with more formatting, Notion just rolled out an AI feature that transcribes and sorts notes, but it’s still a work in progress. Too many steps for me. Most apps do a decent enough job, but none of them are perfect. You’ll still need to double check and tweak afterward or risk sending out a “to do” list that literally makes no sense.
So, yeah, go with Otter.ai if you want something that just works and don’t mind a bit of cleanup afterward. Fireflies.ai if you like shiny features. If your meetings are absolute chaos, maybe record them and sacrifice an hour playing back at double speed. Or just accept that, sometimes, the only thing those AI bots will pick up is the one time you sneezed and everyone acknowledged it.
I’m with @sognonotturno on the “AI note takers still need a human at the wheel” vibe, but I’ll admit I’m a bit less sold on Otter as THE default. It’s reliable, yeah, but it’s also suuuper vanilla and sometimes can’t handle those meetings where everyone talks over each other like it’s a family Thanksgiving. Fireflies’ action items are great—until, like they said, you end up with food delivery as your main Q3 strategy (“Can someone follow up on pineapple on pizza for next sprint?”).
Here’s where I get a little contrarian: Have you checked out Sembly AI? It’s not as mainstream but it does a pretty solid job with messy audio and actually tries to extract decisions, not just action items (so less risk of the classic “Add discuss lunch next time” task…). Plus, it’s got a team function and lets you tag participants post-meeting, so if your CEO mumbles through an entire monologue, you can at least assign it to them to clarify later.
That said, they all need some level of curation, especially with jargon or accents. I’ve honestly found that double-tapping the AI—using something like Krisp to clean up audio before it hits Otter, Fireflies, or Sembly—ups the transcription quality a lot. I know, it’s another app, more tabs, but in chaos meetings it’s worth it.
The Notion AI thing… way too many steps, totally agree. It feels like doing your own homework after the AI takes a stab at it. The dream: something that’ll join, listen, summarize accurately and export to my project tool without weird advice about pizza, but I’m still waiting.
In the end, none of these are “fire and forget”—expect to nudge, clean up, and quickly scan before you trust any AI to send notes to your team. If you want serious reliability, sometimes screen-recording and running it through AI twice is the only way you’ll catch everything (and then you still have to cringe at your own voice, so, trade-offs). Which one you choose basically comes down to which flavor of “almost there” you can live with!
Short version: There’s no “perfect” AI note taker right now, but if your pain point is speed and clarity—especially in the chaos of real-world meetings—Sembly AI stands out for me (and that’s coming from someone who’s wrestled with Otter and Fireflies in more than a few echoey conference rooms).
Let’s break it down:
Pros for Sembly AI:
- Decent at parsing overlapping voices; better than some rivals at identifying decisions, not just action items.
- Lets you tag/assign people after the meeting. That’s a lifesaver when someone’s mic is potato-quality and you need clarification.
- The “team function” is nice if you have rotating participants or execs who like to monologue at Mach 3.
Cons:
- It absolutely still needs you to scrub summaries before forwarding. No skipping that “reality check” step.
- Audio quality still matters (though a bit less if you pre-clean with something like Krisp).
- Slightly less mainstream, so integrations might need an extra click or two compared to bigger names.
Vs. Otter and Fireflies:
- Otter is the control group: reliable, but plain vanilla (no magic wand for rampant crosstalk).
- Fireflies’ auto-action item feature is fun, but you’ll get a side of absurd if your team jokes a lot.
Basic truth: If flawless, automatic context parsing and assigning was easy, none of us would be double-checking these summaries. Sembly AI just nudges things a little closer to actually knowing “what just happened”—especially if voice chaos is your nemesis. Still waiting for that mythical AI that knows a brainstorming session from a pizza order, but for now, Sembly’s the most “set it and tweak it” friendly for messy, real-world meetings.